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Deserving to Die – Terrorists or Victims?

On 9/11/2001, terrorists flew the passengers on their flights into eternity. During the approximately one hour between the fall of the twin towers that claimed almost 3,000 lives, around the world another 7,800 lives went out to meet their Maker. Over the next 24 hours while America and the West struggled to understand the loss of almost 3,000 lives, approximately 256,200 more individuals crossed the line from life unto death. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”

On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Hasan, an officer in the US Army walked into a military service center, jumped on a table, yelled “Allah is great!” (in Arabic), pulled out semi-automatic pistols and pumped out more than 100 rounds and sent 13 more Americans into eternity. Each week since that event approximately 1.3 million have taken their last breath. This is a number 100,000 times more than the 13 who died in the service of their country.

Did any of those almost 3,000 people deserve to die on 9/11? Did the 13 people who were shot at Fort Hood, Texas deserve to die? Ask the majority of Americans and the general consensus will be, “Those terrorists deserved to die and face God!” They would continue, “Men like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Nidal Hasan, and Osama bin Laden deserve to die. Let’s kill them all!”

However, there is a greater question we need to ask ourselves. Do men like Hitler, Hussein, Hasan, and bin Laden deserve to die more than those who perished at their hands? What made the people who died on 9/11/2001 or on 11/05/2009 in the terrorist attacks any less deserving than the 7,800 or the 256,200 or even the 1.3 million to go and face the eternal Son of God and be judged for their sins?

This is by no means to demean the sacrifice demanded of those who did not ask to be killed! Nor, is this a support of any terrorist group. Nor, is this intended in any way to demean the loss of life and the sorrow of those families who were left to pick up the pieces.

The purpose of my writing is because I have been doing some serious searching of my heart, and sadly I find I have not been meeting the criteria required of me as a true believer. Let me explain further.

As Americans, we are very patriotic, almost at times to an extreme. It is a trait that many nations of the world fail to understand about us. It is a large part of what binds us together in the face of a common enemy. In very short order, for example, after 9/11, the vast majority of Americans were ready to take on the enemies of our country by whatever means possible. Hatred and anger ran cold and deep in the veins of millions who were upset that our country had been assaulted. We were ready to hunt down the infidels and murder them all and make them pay for what they did to us! Even many who claim the name of Christ were standing side-by-side in the call to arms and had no issues with our government spending billions of dollars to bomb and attack two foreign countries.

However, I wonder how many of those same Christians were praying that God would bring sorrow and godly repentance to those who would inflict evil upon America. How many spent time agonizing over the true loss of life – 7,800 or the 256,200 or the 1.3 million? How many mourned the fact that the vast, overwhelming majority of those individuals perished with no hope of ever knowing or even hearing the name of Jesus Christ?

Do we stop to think that every year since 9/11, an unbelievable sum of approximately 95 million (the equivalent of almost 1/3rd of the US population) go into eternity? Who mourns their loss? Why are they any more deserving to face a God of wrath than those we know and love, or than those who live on our streets? In the 6,303 days since 9/11, almost 1 billion (956 million) have exited this world, a number equivalent to a little less than the entire population of India!

Yet, we actually rejoiced when we watched the evening news from the comfort of our sofas and armchairs, and we saw the countless thousands being swept into eternity for their part in attacking our country. Oh, we were happy! Justice was being meted out by our brave men and women, and the judgment that was pronounced and executed was in our minds – “FAIR!”

However, does this stack up with the commands of Scripture that we who claim the name of Christ are called to obey? We as Christians are commanded to love our enemies. We are to share the good news of the gospel with those who have never heard. The apostle Paul loved his fellow countrymen of Israel so greatly that if it were possible, he was willing to be eternally accursed from God if only all Israel would place their faith in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ alone for their salvation!

During His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus Christ was asked what the greatest commandments were. He replied, “The first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And, the second is very much like it – LOVE your neighbor as yourself.”

Do we bother to realize that only God can hate the wicked with the demand for perfect justice that hatred requires? Who are we to think that we can stand in the place of the Almighty and condemn others to eternity where they will be in the lake of fire forever? What hypocrisy that our churches are willing to spend millions on new edifices and on entertaining the sheep while 3 people every second go to stand in judgment before the Holy, Righteous God of the Universe! What hypocrisy and lack of true Christian character that we can say equally with the lost of America that we hate our enemies and wish their deaths in whatever manner it comes upon them!

How are we ANY different from those of the Islamic faith? They are willing to kill for the ideals of their faith so that they might enjoy eternity in the bliss of earthly pleasures. Yet, we are willing to kill simply because we hate what others have done to us. We hate and kill indiscriminately because they made our lives uncomfortable. We hate and demand death as they make our trips through airport security highly annoying at best. We hate because we somehow believe what is coming from our pulpits – our sins are not as bad as those of the terrorists. Here in America, we are civilized. We do not deserve death like they do. They deserve justice. They deserve the wrath of God to fall upon them. They deserve hell!

Wake up Christians before it is too late! The world should know us by our love for one another and by the fact that we are willing to sacrifice our very lives so that others will know the love of God, and more importantly, so they will know it is possible to escape from the wrath to come!

We want to ask God to bless America, yet we refuse to obey His commands. May God forgive us for our hatred! The Lord Jesus Christ said that hatred is the same as murder. May the Lord forgive us for our lack of compassion! May He help us to see that we ALL deserve to die, but for the grace of God – His mercy endures forever!

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6 thoughts on “Deserving to Die – Terrorists or Victims?”

I have slowly recognized the deadly mixing of politics with faith and saw the danger of doing so in the historical record of the Roman Catholic Church. Many evangelical churches have US flags in them and celebrate political holidays. As the son of an Army “lifer” and a veteran myself, I have a definite view of right and wrong in the political sphere (if it ain’t in the Constitution, the federal government should not do it) and have grown to see the wisdom in the cries for separation of church and state that were given voice by lonely reformers in Scotland in the 11th century.

My church encourages us to “sponsor” foreign exchange students (through http://www.InternationalCulturalExchange.org). My wife and I signed up and drew a 30 year old married man from Turkmenistan – with his wife and small daughter. He is a proclaiming Muslim, but is in no way orthodox – much as most proclaiming Christians in this country.

As Scripture teaches us, we are enemies of God in our natural state – our record is bad (in Adam all die) and our heart is bad (no man does good). If we have bee risen in Christ to new life, we are to proclaim the cross to all men – even those our flesh hates.

Excellent post. Sad to say this Body of Christ, for the most part, seeks what is “fair” or American Justice, over Jesus’ command to love our enemy.

Churches everywhere house people. Warm and comfortable are they in their pews… It breaks my heart. I’m so ready and willing to serve God, share the Gospel. I pray everyday that the Lord would pour favor upon me according to Eph. 6:19,20.

What a powerful statement/thought/scripture to give up your eternal life, if only to see your brethren saved. I’m not quite sure many would do it…

Interesting post. I do believe that while we should love our enemies, we have every right as a nation to defend ourselves. We definitely should be praying for terrorists. However, if we were not fighting them on their soil, they would be here fighting us on ours.

I agree with much of this post and the general ideas. The gaps between blind patriotism and Christianity has bothered me in that Christians seem to seperate themselves from the rest of our brother and sister Christians in Palestine and thoughout the world.

Many are brainwashed by fear into supporting the wars we are fighting at a very high cost that will come back to haunt us. It scares me to think of our military having to fight without overwhelming weapons superiority, but that could easily happen (Somalia).

I do believe that there is a time to fight and defend yourself, your family, and your country. Defense is the key word. It is far too easy to jump to conclusions about who did what without knowing all the facts and even ignoring what we do know.

We live in a time when manipulation by fear, propaganda and deception has been raised to new levels, and Christians need to depend on the Lord for vengence is His. Not to go out and murder in the name of patriotism just because it as easy as playing a video game. ( See the Wikileaks.com Apache video.)

There is much evidence that refutes beyond a doubt, many of the “official” versions of “terror” attacks that are feed to us. I pray Christians will look beyond the Zionist controlled media for information. (An example would be Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth – Ron Avery presentation).

Since the Roman Empire and before, wars and false flag attacks have been used to keep men in power, and for profit. Republics were also just the illusion of some democracy. Bread and circuses were used to placate the “vulgar plebs”.

While I completely agree with everyone who believes that we have a right to defend ourselves, Americans have been known to be easily mislead by propaganda and “patriotism”. I have been guilty, and slow to accept that my government may not always be in the right. One reason is that I grew up with both parents in the National Security Agency when they could not even acknowledge it existed.

I also have Swiss ancestry and believe in their policy of armed neutrality. They may be a small country, but their history of actually fighting, markmanship, preparation, and willingness to destroy their own bridges and fight to the end, kept the Germans out in WWII even after being completely surrounded. There were plans for Germany to invade, but they knew their objective would come at a too high a price, if at all.

What I want to convey is that Christians need to be very aware that we live in high propaganda zone. Exactly the way that the USSR was portrayed in the cold war. Many good people have learned this the hard way. As long as we let agencies such as MI6/CIA/Mossad operate without accountability we will be represented by murderers, false flag terrorists, spies, criminals, thieves, drug pushers, kidnappers, and liars who believe that their ends justify their means, and there will be continual wars with no legal objective. This is the great lie that should be bothering all Christians.

Even at a practical level we will never be able to maintain the extremely wasteful war economy, foreign aid, and corporate welfare much longer. Our safety comes from the Lord and not men. May God have mercy on our souls for letting ungodly men lead us.

Hal it amazes me that the so called Christian right can’t see what you have stated here. That most of it is coming from inside our own country. And what you said about them being in fear is what we should not be in, according to the Spirit that is in us. Sorry but I think this country is part of the beast system, and having come up out of the earth looking like a lamb but speaking like a devil. We have troops in almost every country in the world. Can you see where our peace is coming from? The end of a barrel. And now backing the UN with our military if any should step out of place like Iraq and soon to be Iran, guess what? They’ll be like the pour peasant’s of Pakistan who get killed by drown air plans flown by some kid with a joy stick in his hand like a video game in a building over here waiting for orders from one of those who could care less for the innocent, who not just might be kill, but who have by the thousands. And then to hear someone who says their a so called Christian say; well that’s war they should’nov been there. Wheres the grief, wheres the outrage. There is none if very little.

And why? Their leaders told them it was OK! but not so, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the ones they did have they got them from the UsofA. And I have grave questions if those were brown skin people who were really behind the wheels of those planes that hit New York and the Pentagon as well as the OK city bombing being done by those people without help from those who are possessed by the devil and hungry for power and riches. If you haven’t noticed, that propaganda machine you speak of is calling our own people terrorist now for speaking out. Their using the McVeigh as poster child for it, Just this morning National Geographic last word on their TV program of the OK bombing said in stern words that “its the terrorist here in America that have to be looked out for”….We’re next!!!!!